Paleopathology and Tuberculosis

Paleopathology and Tuberculosis
Paleopathology tells us that infections sand infectious disease affected living beings in the every remote past.

Bacteria have been found in a one of a Permian reptile (about 200 million years old) and in many other specimens of man and animal up to historical times.

Pathological alterations indicating tuberculosis of the bones (e.g., Pott’s disease have been found in many early Old World’s specimens, which indicate that the disease has existed there since antiquity while it has long been suspected that it existed in the New World as well.

Until recently, no clear signs of pulmonary tuberculosis had been found in mummies the only remains that could show such a disease in the remote past.

Paleopathologists, however in view of the unlikelihood of osseous tuberculosis in the absence of the pulmonary kind, have held that the absence of findings probably due to technical reasons and that “some form of granulomatous tuberculosis has infected man since Neolithic times.”
Paleopathology and Tuberculosis